Can two leftwing gurus save Europe? Chronicles by Thomas Piketty; And the Weak Suffer What They Must? by Yanis Varoufakis – review

Piketty on real-time economics is a revelation and Varoufakis is illuminating about the far-right threat – but the fate of their cherished democratic Europe seems dire

At the battle of Gettysburg, the defence of the Union army’s flank was entrusted to a man whose biggest responsibility until then had been as professor of rhetoric at an east coast university. In the 1993 movie of the battle, his commander tells him: “Now we’ll see how professors fight.” In their latest books, both Yanis Varoufakis – the former Greek finance minister – and Thomas Piketty (pictured) confront the same dilemma: how does a life of academic precision prepare you for a struggle over economic policy in which rationality and proof go out of the window? How, in the modern world, do leftwing professors fight?

Piketty’s Chronicles is a collection of his columns written for the leftist daily newspaper Libération and spans the period from just before Lehman Brothers collapsed until after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. Coming on the heels of his masterwork, Capital in the 21st Century, one might expect this to be the lesser contribution.

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